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By viv, 16 January, 2013 8:00 am

Before we launch a GeoVation Challenge, which calls for innovative ideas in response to the chosen theme of the Challenge, we run a Problem Powwow to unlock the real problems and needs behind it. We invite people with expertise in the area the challenge and the problems identified are grouped into key themes and insights. At GeoVation Camp we spend time with our teams focusing on these problems and how much the ideas offer a solution. In his guest post below David Townson, one of the facilitators at GeoVation Camp, explains the thinking behind this.

What drives innovation? A personal vision? Of course. A new technology? Sometimes (though solutions don’t always need new technology). Recognition of a need can and should also drive it. Without a need for the innovation to address, success in the market place will be limited. In his book ‘Patent Nonsense’, Clive Anderson suggests a common inventor’s mistake is “imagining a problem no one else had noticed and then solving it”.

Failure to identify a need can lead to disastrous, even fatal results. Messrs Boyle and Neill invented a Saluting Device – a hat you could doff automatically. Andrew Jackson Jr. developed an Eye Protector for Chickens, helping chickens everywhere retain peck-free eyes. Albert Bacon Pratt’s invention of a helmet-mounted gun for trench-men in World War I broke the neck of the user. All three were patented. All three seemed to have something lacking; a genuine need.

A problem clearly stated is a problem half solved” Dorothea Brande

Continue reading 'Innovation – what you really need, is a need…'»

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By viv, 25 May, 2012 8:00 am

Well it looks like summer has finally arrived, let’s hope this great weather continues!

While we’re waiting for news from the judging panel of whose been shortlisted for the Wales Coast Path Challenge GeoVation Camp, you might be tempted to head off to the coast for a dip in the sea this weekend? If so, then check out this guest post below from Edward Herath,  currently working with us in the GeoVation team, about a great website that assesses the bathing water quality.

An interesting website that I’ve come across is the Enviroment Agency’s Bathing Water profiles. With the use of Ordnance Survey mapping technology, the Environment Agency monitors and assesses the quality of bathing waters in England and Wales and what the water is like at your favourite beach.

Let’s take, for example, the waters right here on the South Coast. According to the rating scale provided by the Environment Agency, the waters here are of a high quality.

Continue reading 'Summer’s here – time to head to the coast'»

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By viv, 30 March, 2012 8:00 am

Two of our GeoVation Challenge winners from last year, City Farmers and Mission:Explore have been working together to create some beautiful maps using Open Data for Urban Earth, a project to (re)present some of the largest urban areas on our planet by exploring, experiencing and expressing them.  In the guest post below Peter, from City Farmers, tells us more.

In late February, Dan (Raven-Ellison, Mission Explore) took up my offer to produce some maps for his series of urban story walks, an exploration of London using open government datasets to plan his routes. The aim of these walks was to see how the physical environment related to the highs and lows of government statistics.

The first walk was to explore areas with high levels of violent crime. From the online London mapper, Dan had observed that, apart from the West End, Kingston had the highest rate of reported violence. The journey was to start in Kingston and to travel across south West London to the west end.

Although by far the highest rate of violent crime occurs in the West End, this is due to its low residential population, where as Kingston has a relatively average population level yet comes third across London.

Dan’s next journey was to explore the least connected areas of London. Given that he would be taking people to some remote areas of London, it was also nice to see how those areas rated. The final map is a combination of TfL’s Public Transport Accessibility Data (PTAL) and the Environment Deprivation Rank (ED) of the Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD).

To highlight the PTAL levels in highest and lowest ranked areas of Environmental Deprivation, I chose to change the point style in those areas. To achieve that a blur was used on those in middle ED areas.

Following on from the comments on the second map, I really started thinking about how I could colour the maps to represent the data I was showing. Luckily enough the next map in the series was to be depression. Looking at the data available, the best grain I could find was for measured depression based on +2 results from the NHS clinical interview schedule. This showed the rate of what was clinically determined depression at ward level. Given the obvious connotation of blue as depressed and yellow as happy it was mealy an examination of tones to find something I liked.

Next up was an exploration of unemployment, given no natural colour choices for this I had a bit more experimentation to do. On the other hand, as these were based on actual numbers rather than a comparative indicator there was a lot more scope for detailing the extremes.

For areas of low unemployment, I went for a very soft looking field effect. As things get worse the colours darken and I think I have what looks like a smog effect. As the plan for the walk was to look at some of the highest areas of Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) claimant rates I felt it best to look at the top 10% in more detail. For this I attempted to make the areas look a lot harder. I highlighted the top five areas by using a cracked effect and individual colours.

There are also a few areas highlighted where there is a high gradient between wards or small areas of low relative Employment Deprivation (from the IMDs again) within wards with a high rates of JSA claimant.

The final walk of the series was a look at life expectancy. This initial problem this presented was that it varies between men and women. In order to express this I have chosen to express the average life expectancy in an area, and then provide a variance between men and women; in the low numbers of areas where man outlive women, I changed the text to yellow.

Unlike the other maps I had not used quantiles as I decided to colour the areas at year intervals of life expectancy. In order to explain this I chose to key the map using a graph which shows the percentage of the population which live over a certain number of years.

If you would like to know more about the maps or see them in more detail, we plan to add them to the City Farmers website once we have a hi-res image widget set up on our server.

If you’d like copies of the maps then feel free to contact us through the site, I’m happy to send a link to download them whilst they are unavailable.  If you’d like to commission some maps of your own then I’m happy to discus this. The analysis for these was relatively straight forward but would take on more complex sets of information analysis, whilst still aiming working towards something that looks good and draws the eye.

Thanks for reading, I hope you like what you see.

Peter Boyce

You can find out more about Urban Earth and see a more detailed version of this post  here

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By viv, 28 February, 2012 8:00 am

Neil Taylor from Integrated Transport Planning Ltd was one of last year’s GeoVation winners with the idea, Access Advsr.  In this guest post he tells of their experience with GeoVation and why you should enter the ‘How can we transform neighbourhoods in Britain together?’ GeoVation Challenge.

It was great to hear about the launch of the 2012 Geovation Challenge.  This is another excellent opportunity for people with innovative ideas about how open data can be used to transform neighbourhoods in a collaborative and inclusive way.

The idea we submitted for Access Advisr was one of 6 lucky recipients of Geovation funding from the 2011 challenge, which focused on ‘How can we improve transport in Britain’.  As well as tapping into funding which has enabled us to work on overcoming the technical challenges associated with making our web-application a reality, we gained access to fantastic mentoring support from the judging panel and University partners participating in the Ideas in Transit project.

Consequently we have been able to develop a highly interactive website that enables people to rate the accessibility of transport stops, stations and destinations; as well as sharing their experiences of travelling around by blogging and uploading photos and videos to the site.  We are on the cusp of starting our first round of user-testing with people from our hometown of Nottingham, and look forward to receiving their feedback so that we can continue to refine and improve the site.

Not only is it true to say that we would not be in this position were it not for the Geovation competition, but it also worth noting that we made some fantastic contacts through the process of the Geovation Camp and Dragon’s Den showcase.  As a result we now find ourselves working on transport crowd sourcing demonstration projects in the Philippines (on behalf of the World Bank) with several of the participants we met at the 2011 Geovation challenge.

Our experience of the 2011 Geovation Challenge continues to be hugely rewarding and we really recommend that you get stuck in and, if your idea gets shortlisted, be prepared to meet lots of interesting, and highly skilled people on the journey.  Good Luck!

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By viv, 21 February, 2012 8:00 am

The ‘How can we transform neighbourhoods together?’ GeoVation Challenge is looking for great ideas using geography, technology and design to help people help each other in their communities across the country.

Greg Hadfield, a former national newspaper journalist and internet entrepreneur, is organising the UK’s first Open-data Cities Conference. In this guest post, he outlines the importance of geography in an open-data city.

The Open-data Cities Conference seeks to focus on how publicly-funded organisations can engage with citizens to build more creative, prosperous and accountable communities.

It will be attended by more than 200 people from the country’s biggest cities, including executives from public and private sectors, arts and cultural organisations, as well as the creative and digital industries.

The conference – to be held at Brighton Dome Corn Exchange on April 20 – will address profound questions facing cities and citizens in the 21^st century.

What do we mean by an “open-data city”? How do we use emerging technology to create the future we want, rather than wait passively for technology to create a take-it-or-leave-it future for us? And how do we ensure UK cities are at the forefront of an historic shift?

The conference builds on the work of the Open-data Brighton and Hove Group over the last year or so.

During that time, the group’s 120 members have focused on which datasets will be most useful to developers and in what order of priority.

The myriad civic data we have talked about relates to school performance, catchment areas, and property prices; bus times and bus-stops, taxi ranks, car parks, and traffic congestion; about energy use, CO2 emissions, and carbon footprints. The list is literally endless.

Throughout, however, group discussions have repeatedly returned to maps and mapping: maps as navigational devices; maps of roads and transport routes; maps to delineate postcodes, geographical communities, or socio-demographic clusters; and maps to show all sorts of boundaries, between parliamentary constituencies, electoral wards, polling districts, and school catchment areas.

In brief, the key question is: what are the mapping needs of an open-data city and how can such needs be met.

When most of us think of maps, we think of the physical environment: landmarks, roads, buildings, contours, and so on. But what sort of maps will be useful in open-data cities?  Much will remain the same. The fundamental real-world infrastructure of the city will be the basis on which most maps are built. The information necessary to build and re-build or re-purpose such maps will be openly available.

For example, for someone with access to all the election data about a city – political parties, candidates, votes, turnout, location of polling stations – it will be easy to visualise such data on a map of polling districts, wards and constituencies.

Suppose, though, that the emergence of open-data cities coincides with the creation of the “internet of things”, cities in which uniquely-identifiable “things” are linked to information-rich virtual representations on the internet.

Suppose also that the devices accessing to the internet are not restricted to desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

What if your car is connected to the internet? What sort of maps might then be required by someone living in – or visiting – an open-data city?

New landmarks on the cityscape might include:

• Parking meters linked to the internet, signalling when the parking space is about to become available;

• Sensors to identify vacant spaces in city-centre car parks – or to report the length of queues at entrance barriers;

• Residential parking spaces available for short-term rent at short notice;

• Bus routes showing where bus stops are, along with real-time information about where buses are.

It is not clear who will create such applications and such maps. Many people might expect it to be Google, Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, or the next big thing. I have my doubts.

More likely, it will be the new generation of open-data cities that will take the lead, by self-consciously creating and curating the data that can help meet the needs of the individual city and citizen.

To find out more, come along to the Open-data Cities Conference on Friday, April 20.

If you have an idea  that uses Ordnance Survey products and services, including OS OpenData or OS OpenSpace  to transform your neighbourhood, enter it on the GeoVation Challenge to be in with a chance to win a slice of the £115 000 prize fund.

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By viv, 14 February, 2012 8:00 am

Below is a guest post from Daniel Raven-Ellison of Mission:Explore on the new GeoVation Challenge – How can we transform neighbourhoods in Britain together?

I’m very excited to see the new challenge on GeoVation. It’s an exciting opportunity to bring about real change through geography. Thinking geographically is a powerful way to see patterns, make connections, present ideas and crucially, scale-up projects.

We have been lucky enough to win GeoVation awards twice. For us this has not only meant significant and important financial support, but also access to support, guidance and thinking that has helped us to push our solutions forward far more quickly than they would have done otherwise.

Our project, Mission:Explore, is deeply connected to the question that sits at the heart of the current challenge ‘How can we transform neighbourhoods in Britain together?’. At the GeoVation powwow 16 people identified 104 problems and 7 themes. One of these was “how do we provide safe environments for our children to be active?” and this problem sits at the heart of what Mission:Explore is about.  Children being active in their community has a wide range of benefits of course, not least their personal physical and mental well-being as well as that of their wider community.

Through Mission:Explore our solution is to encourage and inspire more children and families to play outdoors. We are working to do this through our series of children’s books and social website that includes hundreds of quirky outdoor activities to do. On our website children and families can pick missions , collect points and earn rewards for doing them. Some missions can be done anywhere but others need to be done in specific places.

Last year we won funding from GeoVation to tackle the problem “How can we improve transport in Britain?”. Our work focusses on the National Cycle Network and using new functionality on the website to find ways to increase the number of children and families using the cycle paths. Focussing on 10 cities in England we’re going to be releasing 500 missions along cycle paths that support playful learning and with a mixture of reward types. Some rewards are just online badges but others will result in physical prizes. For this project the Technology Strategy Board’s Ideas in Transit project has been providing financial support, UWE is helping with research, Sustrans are providing logistical and cycle counter support and the dairy company Arla are supporting us with sponsorship through their energetic Kids Closer to Nature campaign. The website itself is built in partnership with the fantastic interactive agency, The Workshop, in Sheffield. Mission:Explore the National Cycle Network will be going live from the end of this month and will be in full swing before the summer holidays.

We’re currently looking for charities and public sector organisations that would like to use Mission:Explore to challenge children and families to discover new places and learn in creative ways. Later this month we will be launching private accounts which will allow schools to create missions that only their pupils will be able to see.

Our experience of GeoVation has been a powerful and inspiring one. I really recommend that you take part and see how far you can get. Good luck.

Mission:Explore are currently crowd funding their next children’s book, Mission:Explore Food. They are looking for people like you to contribute as little as £1 to help make the book happen. In return you can be illustrated into the book, request an experience day and much more. Visit Mission:Explore Food to be part of it.

Daniel Raven-Ellison
Mission:Explore

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By viv, 26 January, 2012 8:00 am

In September 2011, GeoVation challenge winner’s liftshare began development of ‘myPTP- A Travel Plan Just for Me’; an innovative web-based tool, designed to provide personalised travel plans to individuals at a fraction of the current time and cost.

liftshare’s myPTP Project Manager, Katie Lumley, gives us a most up-to-date progress report on how the tool has been shaping up over the last 5 months:

Since September 2011, the liftshare project team have been working hard to develop and refine one of our most exciting projects – myPTP – funded through GeoVation and the Ideas in Transit project.  myPTP will uniquely combine public transport, walking, cycling, and car-share options for individual journeys, and have the potential to help any organisation or community effectively deliver personalised travel plans (PTPs) at a fraction of the current time and cost associated with traditional approaches.

myPTP encourages and enables users to make informed choices about the way they travel.

Development began with design, before working to build, test, and refine the new and innovative web-based tool. During November, our biggest hurdle; accessing data for all modes of transport (walk, cycle, car-share, bus and train) across the UK, was overcome, and work to integrate data for all transport options then began in December.

Users will input individual’s journey information and in return will receive clear information on all transport options available to them, including maps, local provision options such as community transport, and any incentives the organisation has put in place to change their travel behaviour e.g. a week’s free bus pass. Ongoing communication is then possible to monitor modal shift and follow up changes in provision etc. Below is a sneak-preview of the online myPTP results:

Over 38 organisations have already expressed interest in using myPTP to deliver PTPs to individuals, and of those three organisations have been chosen to pilot the tool this February. These initial tests will be carried out in collaboration with researchers from the University of West of England, through the Ideas in Transit project, and will help us to evaluate the usefulness and usability of myPTP from an end-user point of view (that’s me and you!), as well as assess its impact ongoing on travel behaviours. We are looking forward to hearing feedback from the test pilots so we can keep innovating and refining myPTP to ensure it is useful and effective for all.

We are very excited with the progress of myPTP so far; both internal development of the tool itself, as well as its seeming ability to appeal and meet individuals, organisations, and transport operator needs. If you would like to:

• Help individuals make informed smarter choices about their mode of travel, as well as improve accessibility.
• Better understand transport patterns of your organisation, to increase efficiency and save time and cost.
• Help Local Authorities determine shortfalls in provision and help local transport operators determine what services will best satisfy demand.
• Have on-going communication with individuals about their travel options to achieve real modal shift, and to relay any possible changes in provision.

myPTP could be your solution. For more information please feel free to contact me, Katie Lumley, on: (01953) 451166 or katie@liftshare.com.

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By viv, 23 December, 2011 8:30 am

Bikemapper.org.uk is new website looking collecting information to plan a revitalised London Cycle Network.  On the site you can upload photos and of parts of the network to build up a picture of what is working or not working and if anything is missing. Below Simon Parker tells us more:

I am pleased to be able to tell you about the launch of a new website, www.bikemapper.org.uk, which I hope you will be interested to visit.
The purpose of this website is to facilitate the study of a proposed design for a revitalised London Cycling Network. Primarily I am seeking to establish which sections of this network are functional and which are not, and from here it should be possible to build up a complete picture of the current cycling environment. It is hoped that, in turn, this would help to inform the debate about where future investments in cycling would be best placed.

The website is aimed mainly at people who have an interest in developing an amenable cycling environment in the capital, though naturally I would be delighted if the general public also felt inclined to contribute. In particular I ask that people upload any photos they may have of the London streetscape.

Bikemapper was made possible because of a number of people, beginning with Ben Irvine from Cycle Lifestyle, who is responsible for the London Cycle Map Campaign,, and who has done more than anyone to give my proposal a more polished edge. My sincere thanks to him, and also to a remarkably talented young man named Fela Maslen, who very patiently and competently has worked with me to develop the website.

I am extremely grateful to Martin Lubikowski from ML Design, Jon Haste from KOLB Illustration, Stuart France from Stuff Animated, Josh Coleman and James Nash from Bike Dock Solutions, and Willy and Guy Pearson from Pearson Cycles. Lastly I would like to thank my family for all their support over the years.

Simon Parker
simon@bikemapper.org.uk

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By viv, 16 November, 2011 8:30 am

We are really excited and pleased to be supporting National Geographic Education this Geography Awareness Week with our GeoVation, Mission:Explore. We’ve worked closely with them to create a series of missions that challenge children to go on adventures in their communities, explore their backyards and take action on issues that they care about. Young explorers can unlock points and collect online badges for the efforts. All the details of how you can take can be found on their website at www.geographyawarenessweek.org and the resources will be useful well beyond this week.

As part of this work I’ve been getting email alerts when newspapers, blogs and other media channels mention Geography Awareness Week. It’s exciting to see so many reports that focus on our creative and experiential approach to exploring local communities, but far too many have included and resorted back to the pub quiz style ‘name the capital’ quizzes that mask the opportunities of geography.

I personally find it infuriating that travel has become divorced from geography in the minds of so many people. Travel is usually a gulf away from geography section in book shops (if there is one). This is despite travel being arguably the biggest possible opportunity for the geography community to engage the wider public with the subject in an entertaining and enjoyable way. Exploration and travel are one of the physical manifestations of geographical enquiry and it’s time we reclaimed them. I believe making the explicit link between travel and geography will help to bring new life to geography, demonstrate that it is not just about factual knowledge building and reshape the way the public understands the subject.

The question is, how?

Daniel Raven-Ellison, Mission:Explore

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By viv, 19 October, 2011 8:00 am

Catch up with Mission:Explore with this update from Daniel Raven-Ellison:

12 days ago we released our new Mission:Explore website, since then we have watched as young and old(er) explorers have accepted, completed and then reported a wide range of missions. People have been photographing where the ‘wild’ is taking over from civilization, designing memorials and earning rewards for doing so. One explorer (Sir Spiffington) has already created his own website which includes a great animation and a funny film, all inspired by the new site.

Making the Mission:Explore website is a continual process. The funding that we won 5 months ago through GeoVation from Ideas in Transit and the Technology Strategy Board has allowed us to implement a number of significant features. These include:

• Partner accounts which let other organisations create their own challenges;
• Scoring and leaderboards, which will soon also include groups;
• An extras box on mission pages which includes QR codes that can be scanned for quick access to the relevant page along with a widget which can sit on other websites;
• Explorer profile pages so that users can keep track of started and completed missions, their points and keep an explorer log;
• A content management system for creating, risk checking, tagging, scoring and publishing missions;
• A split community with those not logged in and aged 12 or under not being able to see user generated content and missions which are rated for older users.

National Geographic Education are already using the site for their work in promoting geography awareness week.  I presented on Mission:Explore for teachers supporting National Geographic in Portland in August and you can see the videos from this here . Love Forest, OPAL, Priory School, the Geographical Association and many others are currently live on Mission:Explore or soon will be.

The core of the GeoVation work is to see how Mission:Explore can be used to increase the number of family leisure users on the National Cycle Network. Crucially, we want them to come back too. We are working with Sustrans not only to create the challenges but also to monitor user numbers in the field. An additional component is a the work we are doing within the project for the dairy company Arla. Arla want to bring a wide range of children Closer to Nature and we are bringing all of this together by using Mission:Explore and the National Cycle Network to draw young people out of sub-urban areas an into ‘nature spaces’. Our first trial will take place in Berkshire next month and we will be using our findings from this work to decide our following steps.

Last week we were lucky enough to be invited by the Technology Strategy Board to have a stand at Innovate ’11, the innovation networking event and exhibition. This is an example of the one of the unexpected benefits of working with GeoVation that has been a great help to our work. Innovate ’11 is was an awesome event and one that I would recommend you attend in the future if you are interested in cutting-edge innovation and creativity. At Innovate much of the interest in Mission:Explore was for rebranding it so that organisations or regions could have their own bespoke versions.

We are now at a stage where we are looking for GeoVators to GeoVate with us. We have a limited number of free accounts on Mission:Explore which can be used by charities and public sector organisations to create games, hunts, trails, learning activities and more. If you or someone you know would be interested in this offer they should email us at hello@missionexplore.net to find out more.

We will be blogging again next month with an update on our work to increase users of the National Cycle Network.

You can become an explorer on Mission:Explore for free by visiting www.missionexplore.net.